Our
days in "port" at La Rochelle were not unlike
any of our other city stays. A little tourism, no
bicycling, writing and updating the web. We were struck
by the beauty of the town and the port and had a picture
postcard view of the old port, its ramparts and the
gothic lighthouse. Connecting to AOL to upload our pages
to CruzIO reminded me of my days working in Eastern
Europe. Had to disassemble the telephone and wire the
computer into it because the phones were attached
directly to the wall. A small price to pay to be able to
stay in a place with such a view.

One afternoon while Andrew
was writing his passage I hit the town to shop for a
picnic. We wanted something special to go with the
Mouton-Rothschild wed bought a few days before. I
was surprised when our hotelier couldnt direct me
to a traiteur (a fancy french delicatessen) nearby. I
thought a city of this size in France must have one or
two?! Walking around I stumbled upon the market square.
It was perfectly preserved with its permanent structure
of cast iron, brick and glass standing in the center. I
picked up some fruit, foie gras, smoked sliced duck
breast, a cannelloni, some tiramisu and a baguette.

We sat on our balcony and
gorged ourselves on the meal and the view. While we ate
the tide receded at an alarming rate. I wish Id had
the presence of mind to take a before and after
photograph. Within 30 minutes the little harbor below us
was nearly emptied of water. Earlier we were wondering
why there were so few boats and so few moorings. Our
answer came as we saw that there was more sand than sea
at low tide. Now we understood why there was a lock at
the entry of the other little harbor which held its water
level 25 higher at low tide.

We went to a sad little
bar after dinner that night. The guide pitched
"ambiance techno", but "ambiance
triste" probably fits better. Five sourfaced frogs
sat quietly drinking beers in barstools that promoted bad
posture. Perhaps it was too early, after all the sun had
just set an hour and a half ago (it was nearly 11:30) and
it was Tuesday night.

On Wednesday we had a very
late start. Andy and I went to the market square for
breakfast and were surprised along the way how quiet it
was in the downtown area. We stopped to ask someone the
time fearing we had gotten up too early. It was a few
minutes before nine, not so early. As we came closer to
the square things heated up. It was market day. All of
the vendors from the country side had set up their stands
in the square, along a road that led to a canal and in
parking lots. After snarfing down a couple of pastries we
went in search of fresh squeezed orange juice in the
market having tired of the terrible canned stuff. No
luck, but we did manage to find some bottled grapefruit
juice. Becoming comatose it was time to find some coffee.
Stopped into a café accustomed to serving the workers of
the market the barkeep was gossiping with her girlfriend,
a butcher and a vegetable clerk. She was clearly a
lesbian, dressed far more butchly than the french boys
and her display of her teddy bear in a leather jacket was
a dead giveaway.

Returning to the Hotel
after our outing it was difficult to get started.
Wed grown complacent after only a days rest.
Watching the wind whip the flags of the harbor against
the direction of our intended travel did not help
motivate us. We packed our bags and I put the telephone
back together and we hit the road. We began our day along
a canal with a bike path the sun beaming and the wind
bearing down on us. Tough riding, but glorious to feel
warm and see the sun. Stopped a few kilometers down the
road to assemble a little picnic and sat down to eat it
at a war memorial in apark. Just as I was smearing goat
cheese on my baguette some goofy germans wanted us to
move so they could photograph the monument. Strange, not
only because they lost the war, but because it was such a
bad idea for a photo.

The winds picked up even
further after lunch and we were happy when the road would
be protected by a hedge or building for a few yards so we
could pedal in peace. Those moments were few and far
between for most of the day was spent riding through open
fields of spring wheat. I had an epiphany while staring
out into a field watching it wave and swirl in the wind
like the pelt of a furry animal. The wind blowing the
fields of grain evoked the brush strokes of Van Gogh and
left me wondering whether life was imitating art or vice
versa.

Riding into a little town
we stopped at a little bar/café and watched a video
games demonstration loop while sipping an Orangina.
It was called something like "Rage in San
Francisco", an automobile race, it sat unused. The
graphics were amazing, had nothing like that in the
arcade when we were kids. Behind the bar was a pencil
drawing of a very ugly dude with the word
"Wanted" above and "Patou" below.
Just as we spun around to ask the barmaid who was Patou
we saw him just behind her. Seated at a table, chin in
hand was the dwarf smiling at us. "Is Patou the boss
around here?", we asked. She answered, "yes, in
a way." While she ironed table linen and asked us
questions about our journey he would grunt a few
unintelligible syllables, sounding more duck than human,
and she would reply sweetly to him. We couldnt
understand his language but she could. It was good to see
a handicapped person in france outside of a home where
they normally hide them away.

Later we were riding along
and saw in a distant field kites dancing above the wheat.
On a whim we decided to divert towards them and watch for
a few moments. Watching someone entertained by the wind
seemed a great diversion from it. Five kids sat in the
field flying three kites. They were the fancy kind with
two strings that make it easy to navigate the kite into
doing loops, dives and swoopy turns. The kites more
interesting than the video game we saw earlier in the
bar. We were just a few yards behind them having a snack
and some water watching their show. Theyd look back
at us curiously but never approached us. It was at that
moment that I realized I missed the curiosity of the kids
in the states. Almost everywhere we would stop wed
have kids asking us a hundred questions about us and our
journey. French kids were just not conditioned to do so.
Theyd stare but keep their distance and curiosity
to themselves. Adults too keep their questions guarded
and stare at us in amazement as we pass. The look at us
like we are some strange invaders, a perplexing new
technology, marauders or some combination of the three.

Soon we came across the
Venise Vert (green Venice), the swampy region that was
our goal for the day. The low-lying terrain criss-crossed
with canals. We had begun the day along canals and now we
were ending it beside them as well. We stopped at the
tourist office in Arcais to find out about our lodging
opportunities and the sour-pussed clerk nearly beheaded
us when we asked her for some advice right in front of a
sign that said "lacceuil est le sourire de la
France" (the welcome is Frances smile.) Seemed
a poor excuse for the lack of real smiles in France.

Arriving a few moments
later at the gite (bed and breakfast) the host grinned
and welcomed us. It was literally the first French person
besides the barkeep and Patou that had smiled at me all
day. We knew we were home for the night. She showed us
our beautiful country room and made us a deal which
included free rental of a boat to navigate the canals
with before dinner. I sat back and enjoyed the late
afternoon while Andy paddled our launch through the
canals of Venice Vert. It was so green it almost hurt my
eyes. Even the waterways themselves verdant with the
algae growing in them.

When we returned her
husband had returned and offered us a glass of his
homemade beverage of wine and cognac. Within a few
glasses I was woozy and ready for dinner. There our
disingenuous server brought us a tasty meal of sliced
duck and a terrine of fish quickly and officiously. Later
back at "the ranch", our hosts were fascinated
by our computer so Andrew gave them a tour of our
website. They showed us some of their digitized photos
and gave us one of the commercial harbor and chateau
behind it.

Within a few minutes of
arriving in the room the pages of the book I am reading
became blurry and I faded off to sleep awaking to the
birds chirping and the sun beaming in the window.

29 May, Arcais to
Pouzauges, 81km

The
sun was shining, birds were chirping, and I felt like
lukewarm death. Just putting on my shoes required major
effort. Breakfast was served downstairs by Veronique, our
terminally cheerful hostess. Afterwards, I kept my
promise to myself to go for a walk along the picturesque
waterways of Arcais, resisting temptation to curl up
along the grassy banks for a nap. My walk eventually led
me to the port, where sexy Frederic whom we had met
last night over pineauwas waiting for customers to
push through the conches. He invited me across the
street for a coffee, and showed me a handmade book of
photos and clippings that served as the village archive.
He told me of the frequent floods, the time he pushed
Mitterand around in a boat with the ranking Socialists
from nearby Niort, and the crops that are no longer grown
in the marais due to the difficult labor involved
and the lack of demand. There were many photos of cows
being transported in the boats ("thats only
folklore now," Frederic explained) and others of an
old guy who made eel traps out of straw, an art that died
with him several years ago.

Both Fred and I could have
stayed a few more days in Arcais, but we had a rendezvous
to keep some 175 kilometers away, so shortly before noon
we hopped on our bikes for the ride to Coulon,
self-described capital of the Marais Poitevin. It was a
very tough eleven kilometers against a howling wind.
Coulon came as a disappointment after the perfection of
Arcais; it isnt nearly as pretty a village, and has
been all but effaced by mass tourism. We ate on a terrace
full of Brittanic tourists and contemplated returning to
Arcais for a lazy afternoon of napping and boating.
Somehow, though, we managed to muster the energy to climb
back upon our bikes and head uphill out of the swamp. On
our first downhill of the day, I couldnt understand
why I had to pedal so hard. A quick inspection revealed
that I hadnt replaced my wheel properly after
changing the rear tire this morning. It was rubbing
against my brakes big-time, thus partially explaining my
lethargy in the saddle for the previous thirty
kilometers. Even with the problem fixed, however, I had a
hard time keeping up with Fred through the steep hills of
the intensively cultivated bocage of the Vendée.
This was my first visit to the Vendee department, famous
for resisting the French Revolution and remaining loyal
to the crown, and to this day a bastion of French
conservatism.

We made our Orangina stop
which has become a BikeBrats tradition in
Francein a little town called Vouvant. The waitress
offered us "sanguinary Orangina", made from
blood oranges. It seemed appropriate for the
Vendees bloody past, so we tried it. All around us
on the terrace it was Brit-o-rama, signaling that we were
once again in tourist country. We made a quick visit to
the towns ramparts, the creepy church and a tower
that legend says was built by magic in one day.

Beyond Vouvant, the hills
grew bigger and the wind grew stronger. Windmills began
to appear on many of the hillsides. The last twenty km or
so into Pouzanges offered many spectacular views of the
surrounding countryside and some of the steepest climbs
weve endured since the Hill Country of Texas.
Pouzanges itself is built upon one of the highest hills
in the region, and it was quite a pump to get to the
strategically perched center. I had another flat tire
this time in frontand made Fred investigate
our lodging options for a change. He came back saying
that the only decent place in town was full, which meant
wed have to sleep above a bar, in terrible beds
with penis pillows. I was ready to sleep anywhere, still
feeling like a zombie. In fact, I hardly feel worthy to
write about today since I didnt really experience
it as a sentient being

Click
on image to see full-sized version

Comatose in Vouvant

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on image to see full-sized version

Claire,
William, Olivier and Andrew

Gaston
and Fanon share a tender moment

30 May, Pouzauges to
Challones, 84km

Today
was my day feel like death. My bed last night so soft it
sucked me into the center and prodded me with its springs
all night. A walk through Pouzages center square
yielded a Pattiserie breakfast. Afterwards Andy had three
flats before even leaving our bar/hotel. He pumped his
tire so furiously he sprained his arm while changing the
second. I had to change the third one for him, and as
though a miracle had occurred the tube of the first flat
had repaired itself without us having to patch it?!

Cool morning breezes and
high clouds chilled in the morning and I shivered until I
warmed up climbing to the next town. The road started
very busy and I shivered even more each time a big truck
passed too closely. The road calmed, the sun flooded the
sky and it warmed us. We ascended the tower at San Michel
de Mercure to see the panorama from the highest point of
the Vendee. It was tough to mount the circular stairs
without aid of a light, but we managed only to discover
on our descent that the light switch was cleverly hidden
and that we could have made the climb more safely. From
the top we had a good view of the days ride ahead
of us. It looked to be leveling off which would be a
pleasant change from the hilly and windy days before.

Remounting our bikes we
set off for our rendez-vous in Challones. Before lunch
and after a glorious downhill we mounted a little hill
into a town with a ridiculous name. "La Trique"
means erection in especially vulgar French. There was
nothing so exciting about this town to warrant its name
presently but one couldnt help imagining how it got
it in the first place. Before long we arrived in the
sleepy little city wed intended to lunch in. Cholet
was not very bustling for its size. Sleepy vacant streets
produced the feeling that wed arrived on a holiday.
We found some difficulty locating a restaurant that
actually wanted to serve lunch. A Brasserie wouldnt
produce a menu, another place only had one thing and
wouldnt serve on their terrace. Finally we happened
upon a Tex-Mex place. We were prepared for the worst
having experienced French interpreted Mexican cuisine
before, but we were tempted by the idea of fajitas. At
first they too seemed reluctant to serve, but seated us
and gave us menus. After a few minutes our waiter, and
owner of the festively decorated salon, approached us.
Having heard us speaking English he returned in kind.
Turned out to be the only enterprising person in France.
(In fact it is constantly surprising to me that the word
for and enterprizing individual is French 
Entrepreneur?!) In fact he was very enterprising (we
heard about it all, youngest hotel manager in France,
apartments in Paris, leisure lifestyle, could retire
now .) Furthermore we heard of his personal trials,
his recent divorce, raising his thirteen year-old child
and on, and on. Frederick Wolfgang (Che pa quoi, meaning
we dont know his last name) had a terrible and
reclent failure. He came to Cholet to "chill
out" and play his music and ended up starting this
business instead of relaxing, "I just couldnt
sit still." He managed to do so in oh-so-cher
(expensive) France on an investment of only fifty
thousand francs. As expected, there was nothing inspired
about the cuisine, but it filled my tummy. At the time we
intended to ask why Cholet was there but forgot and later
learned it was famous for handkerchiefs. If worn a
special way they indicated whether you were a royalist or
revolutionary.

Bloated from our oversized
lunch, I wanted to train it to our final destination of
the day, but the train schedule would not permit this
luxury. Good thing too, the afternoon ride was gorgeous
on empty and lovely roads through rolling hills. The cows
were, as always, fascinated by our pressence. The wind
blew us all over the road and sun baking us as we headed
for Challones. We arrived thirty seconds before our
scheduled meeting time at a local bar with a terrace near
the central market. Within a few minutes we were sitting
in the sun sipping a pastis, the first since our arrival
in France.

Just as we were finishing
our second sip Olivier arrived. We hugged and kissed our
dear friend from Paris and shared a bottle of the
Loires sweet white wine while exchanging stories of
the last seven months. (I hadnt realized it until
just now as I write about him, how much Olivier had been
a part of my day-to-day life in Santa Cruz and how I
missed that. Though he lived more than six thousand mile
from us our house reeked of him. The chairs, fixtures,
sofas, and artwork he had produced were in every
room and served as a constant reminder. Now, living so
much more austerely I miss those daily remembrances.)
Filled with his nervous energy and enthusiasm I became
energized and ready for a fun weekend resting and
catching up. We chose Challones because it is the summer
home of two other friends we were to meet at the bar.
William and Claire spend half the year here and half in
India.

We adjourned to William
and Claires house for more wine, papadum and
marvelously appetizing spread of Claires creation.
Eggplant, fresh coriander, loads of garlic, olive oil and
parsley went down easily. Claire and William often spoke
in a silly parody of Indian English, and by the end of
the weekend we were all saying things like "What
country you are from?" Another phrase that we rested
upon often while offering drink or food to one another
was "take it". An imperative that
Williams rice seller uttered to him in Varcala when
he picked up his weeks supply.

It was a few hours before
we made it to our Gite to clean up for dinner. M. Fardeau
("fardeau" means burden in French) showed us
our very homey accommodations on a quiet island between
arms of the Loire. A huge kitchen, terrace and sitting
room below; and two rooms upstairs all looking over her
property, donkeys, the river and the town on the other
side. We were the last customers served in the little
restaurant on the other side of the bridge and the last
out much to the polite dismay of the workers there. It
was hard to leave after the wine and a meal in such great
company. Especially difficult for me to get up after my
desert which was the heaviest thing ever eaten by me in
France. An ultimately dense cake filled with dried prunes
and other fruit drenched in creme anglais. It was
probably my first and last Far Breton.

The next day I cleaned our
bikes while Andrew caught up on some much needed sleep.
Took forever to clean my hands afterwards before we went
to visit Oliviers sister, who lives some sixty
kilometers down river near Nantes. She spoke English
beautifully having spent one year in the US studying. She
showed me photographs of her trip and spoke fondly of her
stay as though it was yesterday. Her seventies view of
the states had hardly changed since here visit.
Shed lost contact with her host family but hoped to
contact them again if she ever makes it there again.
Olives nephews were hilarious, one ultra serious,
Romain, and the other a goofy nerd, Benjamin. We ate
lunch in their restaurant looking out the "bay
fenetre" they were so proud of. The meal they were
not very proud of, disclaiming that it was not their
restaurants. Despite their reservations I took some
pleasure in a home cooked meal with a real family. At
desert time Benjamin ran to the kitchen, grabbed some
plastic packaged pudding and slurped (literally) two of
them down loudly while we waited for our desert the only
"real" course of the meal having been prepared
in the kitchen of the restaurant. We went downstairs to
digest our food in the ping-pong room in the basement.
There Benjie cleaned our collective clock at his game of
choice. Each ball spinning wildly off our paddles in some
unintended direction as though he was playing us like an
instrument.

A long walk along the
Loire capped our day with Oliviers family. Soon we
were back in Oliviers trucklet (camionette) to
Challones. I rode in the back with all the newspapers
left over from his Friday deliveries in Paris. Olivier
distributes the Israeli paper there. Though he isnt
Jewish he wishes his patrons "Shabbat Shalome"
when he makes his rounds on Fridays. The road and the
smell of the paper started to make me nauseous and I had
to walk back from "downtown" Challones to avoid
loosing my lunch. While Andy and Olive shopped for our
picnic dinner I had a glorious sunny and windy yoga
session on the spacious lawn on the riverbank. A solar
salute took on new meaning.

That night Olive and I
decided to hit Anger (another stop on the Geoff Benson
World Tour, as this journey will not doubt be known as
historically. Here Geoff attended Lycee.) for a wild
night on the town. We didnt leave until well after
midnight anticipating a late night in a French bout de
nuit. We had the advice of the Sparticus Guide which
directed us to a terrible little bar. Even finding it was
difficult, we asked three different groups of folks for
directions before finding it. It was really
disappointing, about five people getting drunk at the
tired little zinc (bar in French, so named because many
older ones are constructed of zinc). Went to a disco, and
when we looked inside before paying we decided to ask the
doorman where to find a real queer bar. He directed us
across town. We arrived at a place with great ambiance.
For one there was a good mix of folks. Gay, straight,
girls, boys, folks of all ages listening to good music
and smiling  "is this France?" We felt
right at home, for everyone wed asked for
directions was at the bar. Olivier and I camped in the
back room of the bar where folks were sitting,
socializing and smoking on really uncomfortable couches.
It was quieter there than in the front room and I could
actually understand people in this environment. Olive and
I talked to two of the guys wed asked for
directions from earlier for the rest of the night. I
thought one was really cute and he was very encouraging.
Just before the bar closed I realized that Olive was
talking to his boyfriend, oh well. Before Olivier and I
road back to Challones I made a date to meet them the
next evening for coffee.

The next day was tough, I
got home to bed just as the sun began to rise. Just
before it did the moon poked above the horizon, a
yellow/silver sliver in the teal pre-dawn sky. The next
night as I was off to see my friends in Anger, Olivier,
Claire, William, their friend, Henrietta and Andrew all
gave me advice. I felt like a little girl going on her
first date. I should arrive a little late, drive
carefully, be safe, dont drink too much and on and
on. It was very heartwarming. Olive had warned me, this
was a group that traveled in herd. He was right, there
were ten of them at the bar when I arrived. Took a few
moments for me to clear the haze of the night before, but
before long I was chatting in my best French. I went home
to dinner to Arnaud, Pierre and Jimmys house. Jimmy
was named after Jimmy Carter. Our president had visited
Anger in the year of Jimmys birth. After a simple
supper their friends arrived one-by-one. Including a
repulsive one that had made endless passes at me the
previous night before spilling a drink on me.

We had been invited to the
home of another of their circle for cocktails while at
the café. We made our way there after dinner. On the way
young Jimmy made a pass at me. There I was treated to a
French cultural experience beyond explanation. As we
arrived they were listening to the soundtrack of a French
musical of astronomically bad proportion.
Starmanias insipid lyrics and music were
astoundingly bad. Their friend were too drunk to
converse, but sober enough to dance and lip-synch. I
could hardly stop myself from laughing. I drove back to
Challones carefully and sober as everyone had recommended
wondering how I would bike the next day after two nights
of no sleep.

2 June, Chalonnes to
Vitré, 120km

While
Fred explored the fleshpots (thanks, Andrew A
little judgy, eh?!) of Angers all weekend, I caught up on
my sleep and enjoyed the comatose pace of life in
Chalonnes. Olivier had been singing me the praises of
Claires chosen hometown for many years, and
Im glad I finally got to experience it myself.
While the town itself is nothing special, Claire has
managed to assemble an interesting, tight-knit group of
Chalonnes more marginal elements, and I genuinely
admire her and William for figuring out what they wanted
out of life and then sticking to their guns.

Much of the weekend was
spent going back and forth between our rural lodgings at
Madame Fardeaus, William and Claires
apartment in town, and Henriettas house just around
the corner, which was the stage of the weekends
biggest drama. Australian Henrietta is married to a
doctor from Chalonnes, Michel, and the two of them have a
twelve-year-old son, Alex, and a slightly younger
daughter, Louise. The family cat is called Fifi and
officially belongs to Louise, and on our first full day
in Chalonnes, Fifi delivered her first litter of kittens,
seven in all. When Olivier and I first went by to view
the kittens, all mewing in a little box, the
neighbors cat and presumed father of the
kittenscame by and soon both he and Fifi were up in
a tree, hissing at each other. It took two ladders and a
great deal of strategy to get them down.

Henrietta came by our
place the next day to inform us that one kitten was dead
and another was on its way. She needed Claires help
to console poor Louise, she said. So we all went over to
assist with what is perhaps the most elaborate burial
ever given for a one-day-old kitten. I suggested we name
it Juppé, in honor of the prime minister who had
suffered a humiliating election defeat from Frances
leftist parties that very day. Michel, an avid weekend
cyclist, told me what to expect from the following
days ride while he carefully fed the other sick
kitten milk with a syringe. By the time we left, though,
it had died too, and many jokes were made at the expense
of poor sleeping Louise.

We got a late start out of
Challones. Everyone had come by to hear the details of
Freds exploits in Angers, and there was another
bottle of champagne to be drunk. The fierce wind that had
howled all weekend had died with the kittens, and we set
off westwards along the island, our bikes feeling
curiously light since Olivier was schlepping our bags for
us. Fred said he thought it was our best days
riding in Europe, which surprised me. It was certainly
our fastest. After winding through country lanes at a
leisurely pace for the first fifty clicks or so, we
joined a straighter road and cranked along at a steady
thirty-plus kilometers per hour, aided by a glancing
tailwind. Lunch was not an easy thing to find at
four-thirty on a Monday in deepest darkest France; we had
to settle for paté sandwiches in a café in the adorable
medieval village of Pouancé. A little further down the
road, a cars horn honking behind us announced the
arrival of Olivier, who surprised us by bringing
Freds new friend Jimmy along. We arranged to meet
them thirty minutes in La Guerche en Bretagne, a dozen or
so kilometers further.

Our entry into Brittany
was marked by a curious sign: "Vous entrez dans le
pays des roches feés", which means
"youre entering the land of the fairy
rocks." While we didnt spot many rocks or
fairies, La Guerche looked much different from the other
towns and villages wed ridden through that day
 lots of old crooked houses with exposed beams and
overhanging porticos; a place that a smurf would be proud
to call home. We still werent sure where wed
be spending the night, and decided wed push on to
the town of Vitre, influenced by a group of drunken old
Bretons at the café table next to us. They said it was a
beautiful town well worth the detour and they were right.
Fred and I arrived at the appointed rendezvous in front
of the castle/city hall and Olivier and Jimmy were
nowhere to be found. This was a bit of a nuisance since
it was beginning to get chilly and all of our clothes
were in Oliviers car. We found them eventually,
though, in front of a funky old hotel across from the
train station, where we had a dinner that was served in a
style from an earlier era, followed by a long walk around
the sleepy, postcard-perfect town.

Click
on image to see full-sized version

Vitre's castle

Click
on image to see full-sized version

Feeling foggy before coffee in St.
Malo

3 June, Vitré to St.
Malo, 105km

The
rewards of my decadence in Chalonnes caught up with me
this day. When I awoke, Olivier and Jimmy were gone. IHNE
(I had no energy). Again, Andrews front tire was
acting up, two flats before we began. Both of us were
beginning to become impatient with it, and snapped at
each other as we fixed it. Finally we were en route and
the rolling hills of Brittany passed under our tires.
Much of the days ride was on very quiet roads where
beautiful, big, black and white Holsteins were surprised
as we passed. Unlike the ride the day before we were
burdened with our bags and a wind that impeded our
progress throughout our journey.

At lunchtime we found
ourselves in a bled called St. Aubin. Quick investigation
found a bar/restaurant that promised a five course meal
for 55fr. Copious amounts of really average food passed
through our lips while ever surly servers pretended we
werent there.

After lunch Andys
tire failed yet again. We jointly cursed his bad luck and
swore to find a bike shop in Portsmouth to rectify the
problem. The wind became relentless as we approached the
coast and the terrain hillier still. Andy felt guilty for
not being able to call Caspar and Antonia and a
functioning phone booth continued to elude us.

We found an afternoon
snack in a darling burg called Dol de Bretagne. Sipping a
soda and munching little schoolboys on a bench in the
classically cutesy French coastal town. The village
idiot, noting that we were foreigners, spoke to us in
one-word sentences. Andrew interested in exhibiting his
mastery of la Langue Francaise used every tense and
conjugation in his responses. The befuddled fool walked
off leaving us to enjoy our snack. (Little Schoolboys are
our favorite French confection by the biscuit
manufacturer Lu. They consist of a Petit Beure with a
wafer of dark chocolate bonded on it.) Though only 28
kilometers, the trip to St. Malo seemed endless. Each
hill feeling steeper, each gust of wind stronger. When we
finally reached the town we found no signs indicating
where the port was. We intended to take the overnight
ferry directly to Britain that night. We found that the
overnight only runs in high season and that we had to
rest in St. Malo for the evening much to Andrews
chagrin. Hed been here four or five times and was
over it. For me, I was glad to rest there for a night.
The "old" city was very quaint. Not really very
old, for it had been completely reconstructed after its
demolition during the war. We walked the ramparts that
encircle the center and watched the sky turn a million
different shades of blue, pink, orange and gray over the
picturesque port and ocean. I half hoped that the ferry
would not run so I could go to the beach and swim in the
natural seaside tidal pool and watch a day pass in St.
Malo.